On the night that Dad had his stroke, Tammy packed me a bag and we had the Westjet website up on the computer to snag a last-minute ticket to Victoria if things turned for the worse. But he stabilized, and travel plans were put on hold. Then he got out of the ICU, and I even had a five-minute FaceTime call with him on Thanksgiving Sunday. By Monday, Stephanie suggested that I could come and visit him. He was still in and out and confused, but there was a good chance that he would continue to improve.
So I cleared it at work and booked an early morning flight on Friday. It was a jump to YVR and then to YYJ. The only direct flight remaining was business class. Breakfast was in Vancouver and Stephanie picked me up at the airport. We went to Dad’s place first to drop stuff off, then headed to the hospital. He had a bunch of cards to open. One was condolences on Uncle Jack passing from Peggy and Elmer (remember that?) and three were signed cards from the people at Poncho’s Coffee who Dad saw almost every day.
Dad was continuing to improve. He was weepy and emotional, and somewhere along the line he’d lost his lower dentures so he was toothless, but he was up. I was ready for him to be very confused: Stephanie had had a bad visit with him the day before where he kept forgetting that Mom had died and then was reminded all over again. But he was very lucid. Some trouble with names and dates, but not much different than normal, I thought.
Over the course of the weekend I got to understand the subtleties of his cognitive issues. He’s doing better, but you wouldn’t want to trust his judgement.
I stayed at Dad’s place for the weekend (cleaned out the spoiled/spoiling food from his fridge, etc.) and had supper with Stephanie each evening. I got to meet their new kittens and say hello to the older cats. Tammy’s so jealous.
The time in Victoria was nice. The weather wasn’t too bad, but there were mostly grey skies and a constant threat of rain when it wasn’t raining. More’s the pity: Saturday morning there was an annular solar eclipse that passed just to the south, so it was about a 80% partial eclipse in Victoria. At the eclipse maximum, I went down to the Esquimalt Lagoon and took a couple of pictures of the surreal not-quite-sunshine.
I zipped around to a few different places in between visits to Dad. I went to Mayfair Mall, Tom Lee Music and walked a bit around downtown. Ian wanted me to pick up a tin of Murchie’s White Hot Chocolate, which I did. I was disappointed with my trip downtown until I went down by the water. There was a group of otters playing on the dock. That was the highlight of the trip.
The last evening was a roast beef dinner at Stephanie’s place. Zachary made it, too, so it was a nice family dinner with 5 humans and 4 cats.
The visiting hours in the Neuroscience ward were 11 am to 1 pm and 3 pm to 9 pm. I visited in the morning time slot and the afternoon/evening time slot each day except Monday. On Monday, I had a client workshop from 10-1 so I got to work at 8 and cleaned up a lot of stuff from Friday first. I realized that since I had my iPad with me, I could use it as a second display, which is really useful for attending a Teams meeting and taking notes.
I did laundry and otherwise cleaned everything up at Dad’s before going to visit him from 3 to 3:30. We still don’t know when he’ll be home, so it made sense to leave it tidy. Stephanie took me to the airport where I hopped from Victoria to Vancouver and back to Calgary again. It was a yawn-inducing 10:30 pm arrival, thanks to the time zone. Tammy picked me up and drove me back home.
We won’t talk about how busy my work day was today, with three days’ worth of meetings pushed into one.
I’m very glad that I went. I wish I could visit Dad today, but that’s not possible. Perhaps as he gets better we can let him have his iPhone and I can FaceTime him. Let’s hope that his recovery continues. 🤞
